Ken's Blog

   On April 14 a group of volunteer parishioners assembled at St. Nicholas to start the preparation of the demolition of the former school office. A lot of work was done ahead of time by the school office staff to get everything moved out and marked for storage. Several loads of unneeded furniture and fixtures including all doors and hardware were moved to temporary storage nearby. All plumbing lines, electrical wires and glass were removed. As Fr. Shaun said afterwards the building looked "eerie" without the doors and windows. 
   The demolition was scheduled to happen on Saturday, April 21, but as weather forecasters predicted heavy rain for Saturday the demoltion crew leadership decided to move the date up to Friday afternoon. At 3:00 pm the ramp to the front door was removed. Then it was Fr. Shaun's turn to start demolition of the building. He was instructed to use the excavator to push in part of the south wall. It would not budge. So he was instructed to try to pull on a section beneath a window opening which he did and the first bricks fell. He was extremely happy with the results and gave controls of the excavator back to it's owner and operator John Kunkel. The building was very well built and reluctant to come down. But with the precision of a surgeon, John took it down piece by piece. A couple of dump trucks, dump trailers and trash dumpster were utilized to remove the building from the sight. There were numerous spectators off and on during the demolition, and several spent the entire day and into the evening. At 10:00 pm the crew shutdown operations with only a small amount of debris left and the foundation still intact. It was time to absorb what had taken place and enjoy some refreshments.
The next morning we were greeted with heavy rain and postponed the foundation removal for the next couple of days. Since then the foundation has been removed and hauled away. The steel, aluminum and copper have been recycled.